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Dr. Jerod Loeb honored by chamber for volunteer work
Jerod Loeb
Updated: November 27, 2012 10:36AM
BUFFALO GROVE — Dr. Jerod Loeb won the Above & Beyond award recently at the Buffalo Grove Area Chamber of Commerce’s Heart of Buffalo Grove awards banquet. Loeb has volunteered for the Buffalo Grove Fire Department since 1998, and serves on the Fire & Police Commission; he was also a member of the Citizens Fire Academy’s inaugural class and helped found the village’s Community Emergency Response Team. But he also works and volunteers in the health care realm: He advises the World Health Organization, the American College of Surgeons’ Commission on Cancer and several federal agencies. Pioneer emailed him these questions after the Chamber banquet.
Q: How did you feel when you learned you were a nominee?
A: Just being nominated for an award designed to recognize volunteer activities is quite special. I must admit when I saw my name next to Steve Rusin’s, I thought “How did mine get there,” considering all that Steve has done in his professional and personal life. And in the case of Larry Reiner, all the years he has served the village of Buffalo Grove as a member of the Park District. So it really was a sense of wonderment for me.
Q: You volunteer in the field of prostate cancer — one of those diseases that many men would rather hide from than face. If men were more apt to get regular checkups, (fill in the blank)
A: As I noted during my oral remarks at the dinner Saturday evening, I was diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer about 15 months ago, and the transition from health care professional to patient has been quite difficult. I am one of those rare men who regularly had PSA testing (with normal results) and annual check-ups and had no symptoms whatsoever ... until a routine PSA exam returned a horrifying result, and immediate follow-up determined that I had a metastatic tumor that had already spread to my bones. I personally believe the advice offered last year by the US Preventive Services Task Force, to limit PSA testing, is dead wrong, and we’ll see just how dead wrong when other men are diagnosed too late in the process to intervene.
Q: Your bio in the banquet info says that your family includes “two very special companion puppies — Hero and Halligan.” What’s the scoop with Hero and Halligan?
A: When I was initially diagnosed, a physician friend suggested that getting a dog would provide me with a great opportunity to take my mind off my disease, and boy was he right. That was how Hero, a lovely 9-week-old Havanese puppy, became part of the Loeb family. But he was also named to help acknowledge some of the true heroes in our society — firefighters and police officers. But we soon realized Hero might be lonely, so we got him a Havanese brother puppy, whom we named Halligan. In case you were wondering, a Halligan is a tool invented by an FDNY firefighter in the 1940s that is now carried on most every fire rig in the world. You might have seen/heard reference to a Halligan tool on the last episode of “Chicago Fire!”
Q: What do you make of that show?
A: I have mixed feelings about the show. I love seeing the Chicago backdrop and the Chicago fire rigs — I love hearing the firehouse banter, which is sometimes realistic but sometimes downright wrong and obnoxious. But I hate the negative portrayals of some of the firefighters and police officers that have become part of the ongoing story line.
